Smart Meters

I managed to have smart meter installation delayed at my house, but suddenly became sick overnight with palpitations, chest pain, insomnia, dizziness, inability to concentrate and memory loss and fainting spells. AFTER becoming sick I found out that the day I became suddenly sick was the day the smart meter roll-out was completed in my area and the smart meters were remotely turned on from base.

I can no longer drive, I can't work (I'm a doctor), I have to go and sleep at my mother in law's place (there are no smart meters there yet).

My life is completely ruined and the energy companies and members of Victorian Parliament completely ignore me. Two doctors have confirmed my disability is entirely due to my sensitivity to smart meters' radio transmission and I am 100% sure of that as I can always tell accurately if I am in a smart metered area or not.

We are now planning to move to South Australia to survive. What is happening in Victoria is a complete breakdown of democracy and an affront to social justice of enormous proportions and implications.

What if this is happening to an old lady living alone? Where can she go? We are all morally obliged to speak up and do something about it, if not for ourselves, for the vulnerable amongst us that, if affected, could not do anything about it.

By an Australian Doctor.

Dumb and Dangerous - The Problems with Smart Grids

How is it that so many intelligent, inside-the-beltway environmentalists are buying into an eco-health-safety-finance debacle with the potential to increase energy consumption, endanger the environment, harm public health, diminish privacy, make the national utility grid more insecure, cause job losses, and make energy markets more speculative?

Answer: by not doing their homework.

Welcome to the Smart Grid – a government-funded money machine capable of intruding into every aspect of our lives. Smart Grid technologies – initially funded to the tune of $3.4 billion through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and slated to cost $11 billion through 2011 – are enough to make even diehard liberals demand a claw back of misspent tax dollars.

On the surface, Smart Grids sound ‘green’ – with promises of saving energy, creating new power-line corridors run on wind and solar, way-stations to power-up electric vehicles, energy-efficient upgrades to an aging power infrastructure, and real-time customer knowledge of electricity use.

And there’s the enticing communications factor: a nationwide high-speed broadband information technology barreling down high-tension electric corridors called Broadband-Over-Power-Lines (BPL). What could be more perfect for communicating facts about the planet, funding enviro-candidates, pushing legislation, and organizing Earth Days?

But few who actually study how these new systems functionwant anything to do with them. Other than those who stand to make enormous profits and the physicists or engineers who dream up such stuff, Smart Grids are giving knowledgeable people the willies.

What Is a Smart Grid?

These days the word “smart” is attached to anything even marginally digital — and indeed it’s an effective marketing tool because who wants anything dumb?

But is the Smart Grid really smart?

The problem: smart metering will turn every single appliance into the equivalent of a transmitting cell phone, and this at a time when public concern about the safety of exposure to the radiofrequency radiation (RF) of wireless technologies is on the rise. Heads up: that’s every dishwasher, microwave oven, stove, washing machine, clothes dryer, air conditioner, furnace, refrigerator, freezer, coffee maker, TV, computer, printer, and fax machine.

The average U.S. home has over 15 such appliances, each of which would be equipped with a transmitting antenna. While older models can be retrofitted, General Electric (GE) and other appliance manufacturers are already putting transmitters into their latest designs, and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is already giving out tax credits.

Meanwhile, people who don’t want to use such appliances won’t be able to deactivate the wireless component without disabling it and voiding warranties. Citing “electricity theft,” it could also be illegal to do so.

Yet, not one safety concern regarding the cumulative effects of 24/7 exposure to RF radiation seems to have occurred to the backers of Smart Grids. And this is despite the fact that all appliances will transmit wireless data with peak power bursts far above current safety standards – at frequencies between 917 MHz and 3.65 GHz in the ultra-high frequency/microwave ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum, several times a minute.

And that’s just the indoor part. All transmitters inside your home or office will communicate with a Smart Meter attached to the outside of each building.(1) That meter, in turn, will transmit at an even higher frequency to a central hub installed in local neighborhoods. In what are called “mesh networks,” signals can also be bounced from house-meter to house-meter before reaching the final hub. So exposures will not just be from your own meter, but accumulating from possibly 100-to-500 of your neighbors’ as well.

That’s a hefty barrage of radiation.

Some gas, water, and electric utilities are now using such smart networks, each with its own metering system and separate exposures – creating a multi-frequency wall of radiation that, in the history of living creatures, is unheard of.

In addition, the meters and the antennas will act as transceivers, allowing both you via mobile phone or computer – and take note: your utility company – to remotely control your appliances. According to Jenny Anderson and Julie Creswell writing in the New York Times, one such system in the Midwest already allows the utility to cycle furnaces and air conditioners on and off every 15 minutes, with the stated purpose to reduce peak-loads on electric grids.

On closer scrutiny, Smart Grids look like another Build-It-Now-Deal-With-The-Consequences-Later fiasco. At a time when health concerns about the safety of cell phones, antennas, and Wi-Fi hotspots are mounting around the globe, Smart Grids will require literally billions of new transmitters, each pumping “electrosmog” into the environment – for which there will be no mitigation, no conscientious objection, and no escape.

Smart Meter Petition UK

Working with the Radiation Research Trust, Wired Child, and ES-UK, MCS-Aware have started a national campaign to protect the health of children and people with Electro-Sensitivity (ES). We need 100,000 signatures online or on paper petitions by April 2012. The campaign is vital to raise awareness of Electro-Sensitivity which affects as you know approximately 3% of the population, including people with ME and MCS.

As you may know the Government are planning to install Smart Meters in every home, school and workplace in the UK to provide real-time monitoring of your gas and electricity. The meters will transmit your personal information every 30 minutes via pulsed microwaves to a hub in the street which will pass the information on to a new central Data and Communications Company. Some areas have already started installation. The scheme raises concerns about privacy, security and health.

Say NO to Wireless smart meters! We are campaigning to demand a fibre optic network with optional wired Home Area Networks. This is really imprtant; if the present wireless scheme goes ahead many people with ES will simply become homeless as they will not be able to adequately shield their own homes! I know many people this has already happened to because of the phone mast infrastructure - they lost their jobs and homes. More and more people are developing ES each year. Worryingly, smart meters emit much higher levels of radiation than mobile phones.

Unfortunately not many people are interested in the plight of those with ES but we do all care about our families. There is NO long term testing of the effect of this kind of radiation (smart meter network) on children. The accumulation of constant electro-magnetic radiation across the entire country is a living experiment; those who are vulnerable will suffer increasing levels of illness and behavioural problems. Recent scientific reports have indicated a link with cancer, leukaemia, heart disease, diabetes and ADHD. Please see the website for more information and supporting research: www.SmartMeterPetition.org

Smart Meter Warning from Sweden 11/03/2011

We live in Sweden. Here the so-called smart meters from the power company EON ( www.Eon.se ) were installed in 2007 and / or the old "Ferrari counter" replaced. They justified the measure by saying that the customer only wants to pay for the electricity that they really used.

We were luckily able to avoid installing the new meter in our house since we are members of the Association of Electrosensitives ( www.feb.se )

We did not want a continuous beam [of microwaves] in our basement.

We explained the reasoning.

Many people who got the meter exchanged had health problems, many even had to leave their homes.

The bills are more expensive, especially in the winter at higher Power consumption costs explode.

We are now forced to read the meter each month and to send the data to EON.se . Even from vacation! Otherwise we are threatened as it is a mandatory exchange [of data].

Some meters are wrong and the customers have to pay bills that are too high.

All this is not motivated by power saving goals.

Rather, it is to get customers to divulge information.

The remote meter reading requires that there is a wireless connection [coverage] from any basement to the GSM [2G] network. Alternatively, it is sent over the power grid, which also leads to electrosmog.

Warning: it's early enough for people to join together to stop this nonsense. The plan is the introduction of smart meters across the EU. The old meter is to be scrapped if it is not smart, they have to be present at least. Many have already asked to have the old meter put back.

Best regards

Ingrid Brandt

Smart Meters - Good in Theory - Bad in Practice

Oh dear - another cynical money-making ploy by the UK Government - not the great hope to save the world as it has been dressed up as in the PR. The only initial savings will be on the meter readers whose jobs will be lost. And our homes will be filled with even more pulsing microwaves just to do remote meter reading. The following sound-bites say it all:-

"At the centre of the new system is the creation of a multi-billion pound company that will collect information from meters in 26 million households." "Telecoms giants O2 and Vodafone are negotiating key roles in the organisation, which will be responsible for receiving information on electricity and gas usage in every home and passing it on to energy companies." "Initially, this "hub" is likely to be a joint venture, but energy analysts expect that once established, it could be sold off as a single company."

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